Well I bloody well didn't. I moved here from the left coast in 1981 and until 1995 had never gone to an Oilers game. So I decided it was time and bought tickets for the pre-season match. It was like sitting in the damn airport waiting for them to call your flight, it's past boarding time and no-one is saying anything. You see various people go out to center field kick the turf, walk away, more people come and kick the turf, then they walk off. The PA announces the game is cancelled (apparently because the plywood under the astro turf rotted out or something). Soon after that Adams starts demanding a new stadium after Harris County had spent some millions in improvements. Got my money back, but didn't get any compensation for the indigestion I got from those crappy chilidogs. I hope his final reward is a never ending loop of having to walk out in the Astrodome and kick the turf.
The guard is always up. There are some changes in the equation though. A new stadium, a new fan base, an improved opportunity to make money if fans come to games. Optimism doesn't mean sucker. We know the faults of Dynamo management and have a history of management at Austin FC. How many years will we watch them do the same thing over and over again and expect different results? We've needed a back line since 2010 give or take and we're bringing in nothing. Midfield was poor last year and we're bringing back the same players and hoping that the over 30's will do better this time. It would be fun to go back to the Quakes boards shortly after the team moved here and see what they were saying about ownership and how Houston should be aware of the screwing that was coming our way. I suspect the opinions would be similar.
Anyone over 10 years old that ate Astrodome food should be responsible for their actions. Seriously, who would do that?
All i know is I'm glad Texas has a 3rd team now. Now I would like for it to have been San Antonio, but if I had to choose between Austin and nobody will then I'm fine with the way it ended up. It's hard for me to say anything being in Houston considering how we got the Dynamo how we lost the Oilers and how it looks like we're going to get the coyotes from Phoenix. I don't care now what happens to Austin FC as long as they don't fold, Austin FC ownership is not my problem, Dynamo ownership is my problem. It sucks what was going on in Columbus but at least they got an immediate resolution, which is more than we can say for San Jose at the time and what we will say for Phoenix when they lose their hockey team. I guess people are going to hate on Austin FC and their fans for a while, maybe because they didn't go through the expansion process. But it's not like the other markets are not going to go through with the expansion process themselves because of this. Just my opinions on the matter. welcome Austin FC.
Also, has anyone actually seen Quioto in the preseason pictures? Dynamo subreddit says some guys have visa issues, but I can’t imagine his issue since he’s a green card holder.
Let me reword my concerns this way: the Aztex lost their team to Orlando that became the MLS franchise. They had a team 4 years and maxed out at slightly over 3,000/game. You then have a stingy, obnoxious owner who seemed as stuck in an older model of the MLS as we are. I meant what I was saying to be like you have a bad owner going into a far smaller and worse soccer city than here. And I say that not as a partisan jerk, I lived there a couple years. Nice place, but it's basically UT Football and then meh. People will have to go out of downtown for games. It feels very Miami Fusion to me. I wish the city well but rationally alarm bells go off. And MLS is starting to take some expansion risks again and to me part of the at least illusion of league success is you're not often moving/folding/bankrupting teams. To me the two biggest risks out there are these "contract option" teams, Miami, Austin, that would not have been picked objectively. They have also gone past harvesting the low hanging fruit to tougher limbs, Nashville, Cincy. So this is a more risky period. MLS has now long outlasted NASL and I am invested in it continuing to last. SA vs. Austin is not meant to be a rivalry comment so much as a comment, if I had to pick one, SA is bigger, pulls 6-7k a game, already has a stadium they can expand, and likely wouldn't be the escape pod for a jerk owner. All else fails the lesson going forward is these owners shouldn't be getting options to move a team written in their purchase agreements for a team currently in a different city, and definitely not ones in cities we wouldn't otherwise pick.
I mean, to me we have had some MLS teams take off despite tepid A-league/USL attendance. But they are sometimes rent free in NFL stadia, generally fresh owners to MLS, and seem fully energized and into a MLS 3.0 type full stadium presentation, ie, they push the fan fun more and have spread past SGs to having everyone sing and such. Maybe Precourt is secretly that or maybe he is the worst possible owner to send to a small city that needs all the help it can get pro soccer wise. To me there are actually similarities between Columbus and Austin, moderate populations, college towns, not much pro sports. What energized Houston -- and has since been bleeding out -- was we started right off the bat with a competitive product. Fans didn't have to convince themselves to watch a modest product, we assumed we were as well paid as anyone but LA, and the legacy team in a hard cap league was championship competitive. Now, we don't pay competitive wages and success is intermittent. We have not had to be fans of "just having a soccer team" and the balloon is deflating. ironically, most new teams have to work through precisely that phase. If you don't have that immediately you can try to get people just excited about soccer but the formula for success seems to be a MLS 3.0 presentation and participation. In terms of Austin, they will be starting fresh, and then it becomes will he either pay for the team to compete and/or make the team something more vibrant than Columbus is. I used Houston as a comparison because I feel like while we are a better soccer city, in our neglect this is trending towards the same conundrum. If not payroll and competitive product there needs to be some other sticky substance the fans crave. Fun, something.
Wasn't here at the start of camp, they lumped him in with a few other guys who were having visa issues. Like you said, he has a green card so shouldn't be any problems. Don't want to speculate (but I will), perhaps he's quietly trying to get the Dynamo to let him leave after those stories earlier in the off-season that he thought he was out of contract and was planning to leave.
From the outside - and hearing 2 minutes of Matt Jordan’s vague non-answers with Glenn Davis not help clarify - it appears as if the Dynamo have a real uncertain roster as it pertains to their best 3 players (arguably). I could see anywhere from 0 to 3 of Elis, Quioto and Manotas being on the roster in August. The mental hurdle for most fans is that while the Dynamo pretty much hit on all 3 of them in acquisitions (representing most of the good acquisitions of the Jordan era) there is no faith that the Dynamo will adequately or appropriately spend any upside gain on replacements. It’s like the company that sells a big unit for a big gain but has no smart way to reinvest the gain and get an equal return.
Not me. Houston got the best owners in the league with the Dynamo. AEG. Look — I get your view. Its the right one frankly. Be hopeful. Just like I’m hopeful for the Dynamo this year. I’m also hopeful that Precourt learned lessons and will be a great owner for Austin FC and the team is a smashing success. I want soccer to succeed everywhere. This just all started with the notion that Precourt had not established evidence that he is a bad owner — and some of us share the opposite view. Your positive hopeful view for your new hometown team is the right one.
But AEG always loved the other girl much more and treated her with real love and attention, whereas we were just a convenient sidepiece in another town.
I've said this before, but I've heard from many in the organization that AEG was never the issue. If the Dynamo wanted something, AEG was supportive. De La Hoya and Brener were the barrier. For De La Hoya in particular, he always had to see a clear vision of a payoff before committing any funds for players, etc.
You got that right buddy. Here is some extra detail — It was the county that paid to take out the scoreboard and put in the new seats. Big expense to. IIRC it was $50m for 10k seats. County Judge Jon Lindsay was taking significant grief and public backlash over “wasting” $50m and left office in 1994. Adams clumsily tried to leverage New County Judge Robert Eckels and Bob Lanier. Lanier’s political instincts and polling told him supporting Adams would kill him for re-election. Remember, Adams got the 10,000 seats by threatening to move to Jacksonville in like 1986. Everyone in Houston was sick of him.
LA Galaxy got more, but we got what we needed. AEG would write checks and stay out of Kinnear’s way. They funded everything he said he needed. Perfect. I see whining about LAG getting more as kinda strange.
I can confirm this, but it was/is Brener and De La Hoya. Both wanted/want “immediate ROI” on investments.
I hope that didn't come from anything I said. If so, I apologize. Born at night but not last night etc.
I assume the answer would be "no" for about 5 million reasons but Jozy is talking like his time is numbered in Toronto. We may be shipping out at least one marquee striker. Why not? Usually when you "aren't in his league" you're not talking about the same league. That's where this has gone awry. DPs have expanded, and we were slow to exercise that, and now that we do, other teams are mid 7 figures before we have our first million dollar player. And now we a potential outgoing player as well as a potential replacement, who will be deemed unrealistic for financial reasons even though strictly speaking we would have the roster exception necessary to make it happen -- just not the willingness to spend. There is a serious problem when the "Gold Plated Juve" argument starts applying within your own league. The AEG argument is false, and at most confuses correlation with causation. AEG part owned a team in a hard cap league. AEG still finagled a grandfather exception for its other team, ie, more salary. As the league progressed into DP Land we were already behind the 8 ball as AEG spent on LA and not us. We made the playoffs or the final and then routinely lost to the team they spent on. And then where DP used to be a couple teams spending where the cheap ones could still spend and make finals, we're now talking several teams on another level than the others. And now we're happy to make a semi. Like I said, the league changed. We are the ones being consistent. As the amount of DPs allowed and amount of teams going full bore has changed, we have slid and slid and slid. It begins with a hard cap and one exception -- that went to our big brother. But LA bungled the supporting cast so we won. But AEG was already screwing us relatively speaking. But the league was flat around us. As the league became less flat we became the valley in a growing mountain range. The mountains were already growing and AEG making hollow claims it was willing to spend but never did. Other than the league wasn't awash in money to show us up as bad, how has the basic spending logic changed. The failure to compete on salary is consistent across owners, it's just the league has changed the roster rules around that, increasingly disfavoring us.
I mean I think people misunderstand how 2009-2013 worked, the teams strong on teamwork and work rate, and decent on defense, but routinely dumping out of the playoffs at some point for want of goals. I think if people are honest with themselves it was an erosion and basically the midpoint on a generally downward curve. People treat it like the continuation but 2nd isn't the same as 1st, is it? And being a playoff regular is not the same as a dynasty. Why? It's a different league when it was Beckham and the 10 Dwarves, to when it's Beckham and Keane and Donovan, to Jozy and Giovinco and Co. That we managed to stay competitive into the second phase is a miracle and not to be confused with AEG prowess. The last years before the AEG sale they no longer kept up with the league. The reality is they never did, we just squeezed more juice from the orange and gave the illusion of keeping up.
This was circa Gingrich and taxpayer revolt, plus we'd put up tens of millions for upgrades only to be told he wanted another iteration. The previous iteration wasn't close to paid for and remains unpaid to this day, hence the County's obsession with finding some use for the building, which otherwise is ugly and a laughable thing to preserve. Does anyone else "preserve" old stadia for something other than utility? And it wasn't meant to be pretty, but to be useful. If it's not useful QED. I think deep down he wanted a new playpen but played along with the incrementalism except the need for the increments wouldn't sell. I half wonder if the idea of taking down the baseball scoreboard was intended to prompt a reaction and then he leaves the first time. He also despite being local was a jerk and not beloved. He didn't suddenly become a jerk after moving. This is the man who fired Bum and then the team stunk for years until Warren came south of the border. Anyhow the point is fool me once, etc.....in that climate he wasn't going to get the second increment approved by the voters. Kind of like Miami after Marlins Stadium.
The telling aspect to me was that the relationship pivoted decisively in favor of LAG post 2008 as it became a DP league. Not only did they have the grandfathering we didn't, we didn't get equivalent spending on DPs as it moved past the single DP who had to fit under the cap. Like I said, that happened under AEG. AEG only ever "funded us" right when it was a hard cap league and hard not to. When other than the grandfathers and fudges all you could do was pay the same. But even then we didn't get the grandfathers, or a DP like Beckham. It's orange tinted nostalgia. Oh, when we won it was AEG. We didn't win because of AEG. We won with a good legacy dynasty team in a hard cap league with minimal exceptions. Once exceptions became the rule our spending became less and less competitive. MLS Cup: 2006-7 Houston 2011-12, 14 LAG We did make 2 of LA's 3 finals in the new era but LA won both times, which if you are being honest with yourself as opposed to a booster, suggests your model is being superseded. And then since 2012 it's no finals as a multi DPs on multiple teams league came up with more teams than 1 that we couldn't keep up with. The landscape has changed from 1 or 2 teams that spend money to a whole tier of teams outspending us. And yet our response is still acting like a smug playoff type team that just needs to fill one hole and look for bench players, not like a team that is getting outspent and outplayed and needs to fundamentally restructure their approach. Are we going to put effort into the academy? college scouting? do a better job scouting and signing free agents? Strikes me as fundamentally crocked to be a checkbook free agent team that can't scout or spend more than half the elite payrolls. I get some will respond, but we don't spend. But all we do is get out the checkbook to get players, we just use fewer zeroes.
You don't go for Jozy because we have a cheaper option at that position (for now). Now spend four very long posts explaining why I'm wrong.